Fireflies

Last night, after a very busy day (I’ll tell you on Friday), I had my first soroban class that is the requirement for my visa. We have decided that in the beginning, I will join the last class of the day that has only teenagers clicking away, and which lasts for an hour, starting at 7 pm. I haven’t practiced in a long time, so I needed a bit of time to remember how to do division and especially multiplication, and I made many mistakes. Oh well, I have lots of time to improve.

When I finally went home after some extra training and a bit of chatting, it was already 9 in the evening and I took a small road that runs next to a little brook to get to the river and walk home along it. The brook is rather small and it runs through a residential area that is very quiet, with one-way streets left and right. Every now and then there are little bridges crossing the water, and although the night was cool (it had rained shortly before), I could see people standing on the bridges and staring into the dark bed of the brook.

It is often better not to show too much curiosity, but at some point I could not restrain myself any longer and I went onto a bridge myself to look down. It took me a while to find out what the people found so interesting, and I was glad about the Japanese couple next to me who kept staring down so intently, I might have left after all, completely clueless…

firefly on reeds

There were fireflies! I had never seen fireflies before, they don’t seem to live in the part of Austria I am from, so I was very surprised. They were of the greenish glowing variety, very nice, and very bright for their tiny size. I watched a bit, but left when it got too cold. The most interesting part about this was that the people who watched were doing so in complete silence, which is very unusual.